Just to prove politics can be fun, First Read asked some campaign insiders from the Romney and Obama sides about their "Oh, crap" moments of the 2012 campaign:
Eric Fehrnstrom of the Romney campaign answered Gingrich winning South Carolina; Beth Myers of the Romney camp said it was Romney's three-state loss to Santorum (on Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri); Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said it was the close primary race in Michigan; Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said it was their worry that Romney might wrap up the nomination after the New Hampshire primary.
I might have thought Eric Ferhnstrom would have said his "Oh, crap" moment was when he realized he actually used the Etch-A-Sketch imagery to describe how Romney would supposedly pivot away from radical conservatism after he got the nomination. And I can't believe no one from the Romney campaign cited the first time they saw the 47 percent video. As for Obama's crew, I think maybe their moment was really when they realized their candidate forgot to show up for the first debate. That was mine. In more general terms, Republicans across the country must have had their collective moment when they surveyed the stage at any one of the GOP nomination debates seeing Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann, Santorum, Cain, Perry, and Romney, and thinking, "this is the best we can do? -- oh, crap."
(And, yes, the Romney Campaign really thought their guy was going to win -- and maybe Mitt himself did, hence no prepared concession speech. See this must-read piece by Noam Scheiber at TNR on the campaign's way-off internal polls.)
Though votes are still being tallied, President Obama is all but
assured a victory in Florida because the lion’s share of the outstanding
ballots come from Democratic-heavy counties.
Obama leads
Republican Mitt Romney by 58,055 votes — or 49.92 percent to 49.22 — but
there just aren't enough votes from Republican areas to allow the
challenger to catch up.
Romney’s Florida campaign has acknowledged
their candidate lost in Florida as well...
"The numbers in Florida show this was winnable," Brett Doster,
Florida advisor for Romney, said in a statement to The Miami Herald. "We
thought based on our polling and range of organization that we had done
what we needed to win. Obviously, we didn't, and for that I and every
other operative in Florida has a sick feeling that we left something on
the table. I can assure you this won't happen again."
Yes, next time they'll make sure all those voter suppression efforts really work. Because what's clear is that the demographics in Florida are moving swiftly away from the Republicans -- that and the fact that the Republican Party is, and will remain, a party of ideological extremism, including on issues that matter to a whole lot of Floridians, like wanting to destroy Medicare as we know it,pursuing a foreign policy of warmongering jingoism, vilifying immigrants at every turn, and embracing white nativism. It wasn't just about leaving "something on the table," which the Obama campaign could say as well, it was about being a party, and having a candidate who embraced the extremism even as he tried later on to distance himself from it, that is increasingly losing touch with reality and that is moving further and further away from the the country's increasingly liberal soul. Good luck, Republicans. Good luck with that.
With Florida's 29 Electoral College votes, Obama will have 332 votes to Romney's 206.
And that means that I got it exactly right -- every state (as did co-blogger Frank Moraes). I'm no Nate Silver, but hooray for me.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/08/3087995/romney-campaign-we-lost-florida.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/08/3087995/romney-campaign-we-lost-florida.html#storylink=cpy
Who: The Romney-Ryan campaign. Where: Florida. What's going on: This Spanish-language ad uses comments by Fidel Castro's niece and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that they would vote for Barack Obama. As The National Memo points out, so would most everyone else around the world. The ad also suggests Obama's policies resemble those of Chavez and Castro:
Romney is targeting the Cuban population of Florida who are the only Hispanics in America he is having much success attracting. President Obama garners nearly 70 percent of the Latino vote nationally, but in Florida his lead is a mere 4 points. The Cuban community makes up about 60 percent of Miami-Dade County’s Republican voters, where the ad is airing. Separate Cubans out and the president leads with Hispanic voters in Florida 65-32. The connection with Castro is clearly designed to incite memories of the island regime that many Cuban-Americans or their relatives fled.
Romney is so pathetic. Red-baiting in 2012. Imagine. The stench of desperation is in the air.
On This Week yesterday, Matthew Dowd, a political contributor for ABC News and former Bush-Cheney advisor, commented on things campaigns say when they are about to lose:
Every time you feel a losing campaign, these three things happen. The first thing happens is, don't believe — the public polls are wrong. That's the first sign of a campaign that's about to lose. The second thing, we're going to change the nature of the electorate, and you're not seeing it reflected in the polls. And the third thing is, the only poll that counts is Election Day. When you hear those things, you know you're about to lose.
Everyone knows it's close, but it is the Romney people who are complaining about the polling and about Gov. Christie's newfound love for President Obama and who just generally seem to be complaining.
It doesn't tell us anything about the outcome other than that Republicans are feeling bad, and that makes me feel good.
Ohio (PPP): Obama 50, Romney 45. (Notably, Obama is leading among men as well as women, while Romney only has a four-point lead among whites, "not
nearly enough to win the state." Romney's core constituency, it seems: white seniors. That's it.) Wisconsin (Marquette): Obama 51, Romney 43. (Notably, Marquette had Romney up by one back in mid-October. This result may be an outlier, but it's in line with other polls showing Obama ahead, if not by as much.)
National (NationalJournal): Obama 50, Romney 45. (Notably, this outlet had them tied at 47 in late-September. And it's among likely voters, where polls have shown Romney doing better than among registered ones.) Meanwhile, the Romney campaign is keeping up the positive spin:
Mitt Romney's top staff offered reporters an endless number of
reasons they're going to beat President Obama on a conference call
Wednesday. Not included on their list of Romney advantages: a clear lead
in the polls.
"Obama has a political enviroment problem," Romney pollster Neil
Newhouse said. "He's got an intensity problem, he's got an image problem
and he's got a ballot problem — and they all add up to a challenging
Tuesday next week."
Maybe they're right, maybe they're not, and of course the race is far from over, but it's clear they're doing their utmost to avoid reality, finding every reason to knock the president down without actually addressing what to them are increasingly problematic poll numbers.
A glimpse into the Romney-Ryan-Republican playbook:
Mitt Romney's campaign has been training poll watchers in Wisconsin with highly misleading — and sometimes downright false — information about voters' rights.
Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters. A source passed along the following packet of documents, which was distributed to volunteers at a Romney campaign training in Racine on October 25th. In total, eight such trainings were held across the state in the past two weeks and 17 since late September.
This is what Republicans think of democracy. And it's just one of the many ways they think they can steal the election.
(Another installment in our extensive " Behind the Ad" series.)
Who: Obama-Biden campaign.
Where: Ohio.
What's going on: Mitt Romney has a shiny new lie to share with voters. This time it's the untrue claim that Chrysler is exporting jobs manufacturing Jeeps to China, and that it's all Obama's fault.
"Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China," said a spokesman. "It's simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world's largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation."
But the most disgusting part of this is the response by the Romney campaign to what even the company in question says is a lie. Amanda Henneberg of the Romney campaign emailed this response to the Obama ad:
"It appears the Obama campaign is less concerned with engaging in a meaningful conversation about President Obama's failed policies and more concerned with arguing against facts about their record they dislike," she said. "The American people will see their desperate arguments for what they are."
Yeah. Right. "Arguing against facts?" What the hell does that even mean? I'm becoming very depressed at the thought that anyone running for the presidency could lie so openly. Unbelievable.
Vice President Biden on Romney's auto industry lies: "This guy pirouettes more than a ballerina."
By Michael J.W. Stickings By now you've hopefully heard about what Jonathan Cohn calls Romney's "desperate, deceptive gambit" in Ohio. Basically, conservative outlets were pushing a completely false story about Chrysler moving its Jeep production to China. Romney then "scared the bejeezus out of Ohio autoworkers" at a rally in Toledo last Thursday by pushing the story himself. Alas:
The story turns out to be wrong. As Chrysler made clear the very next day, in a tartly worded blog post on the company website, officials have discussed opening plants in China in order to meet rising demand for vehicles there.
But instead of backing down, the Romney campaign doubled down (as it usually does when it gets caught lying). Because it already had an ad in place repeating the lie -- an ad targeting Ohio -- an ad, needless to say, blaming President Obama for destroying the domestic auto industry: "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job." This is completely insane, of course, but par for the course for Romney. Everything in that sentence is either misleading or outright false. Read Cohn's entire piece for an explanation, but basically: Far from, and indeed the opposite of, destroying the auto industry, President Obama rescued it, saving "at least a million jobs," including many in Ohio. Finally, though, it appears that even the media are treating this as a lie too far. As Brian Beutler writes: "In news articles, tweets, and other media, members of the national press, usually reluctant to criticize campaigns directly, have taken Romney to task for running a misleading TV ad creating the false impression that Jeep will ship jobs to China because of President Obama's auto rescue." And the Obama campaign is firing back as well, including with a new ad and this from Vice President Biden:
This guy pirouettes more than a ballerina. Now he says -- seriously, think of what he's saying within two weeks. I find -- I've never seen this in public. I've served with eight Presidents. I have never seen this in my public life. Within two weeks, he's running an ad in this state saying that President Obama made the companies go bankrupt; is now -- gave the industry the Italians, who are selling it to the Chinese. Whoa. As we say in my faith, bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I mean, what are you talking about? I have never seen anything like that. It's an absolutely patently false assertion. It's such an outrageous assertion that one of the few times in my memory a major American corporation, Chrysler, has felt obliged to go public and say, there is no truth. They said, Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. Chrysler Corporation, which is highly unusual, said, a careful and unbiased reading would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.
Ladies and gentlemen, have they no shame?
Romney will say anything, absolutely anything, to win, it seems. But he can't run from the truth.
Here, watch it... Romney is desperate to win Ohio, and as we've seen throughout this campaign, just as we saw during the Republican primaries, he's willing to do or say anything for votes.
It's all part of what I've been calling his relentless deluge of dishonesty.
The Romney campaign has entered the stage where if things look dicey in the hard numbers, they cannot let it show that they're at all concerned. In fact, the worse things may look, the more upbeat they are. This is not a new tactic. In fact, at this stage of the game, it's one way to tell that they know they've got a rough road: crank up the optimism and exuberance to 11, to the point where you start creeping people out with the maniacal laughter and straw-grasping:
"I'm optimistic, I'm optimistic," Mr. Romney told supporters Wednesday night in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, repeating the word throughout his rally. "Not just about winning — we are going to win, by the way, we're going to do that. I'm more optimistic about the future for America." If that confidence is welcomed by Mr. Romney's supporters, who far outnumber the crowds at most Republican rallies four years ago at this point, the mood is more guarded back at his headquarters in Boston, where the campaign is trying "not to get caught up in the moment," in the words of one aide. The Romney team is mindful that the new enthusiasm has not opened any new paths to winning 270 electoral votes. The campaign continues to keep an eye on trying to make a late run at Pennsylvania, advisers said, but it remains more of a last-ditch option.
Sure, it's easy to understand why a candidate has to project that they're going to win; if they don't, who will? It's also part of the grieving process; denial, bargaining, etc. And the Republicans also have the tendency to bully the press into believing anything they put out there due to the sheer force of their will: they never back down, even when they're faced with overwhelming facts and reality, like the little kid denying that he raided the cookie jar even as the crumbs spew out of his mouth.
One of the boilerplate lines from the Romney campaign has been that President Obama has "doubled the deficit." They're right... if by "doubled" they mean the president actually made it smaller:
Late Friday afternoon, the Treasury Department published the official report on the U.S. budget deficit for the most recent fiscal year: $1.089 trillion. While that's obviously still a very large budget shortfall, the deficit is $200 billion smaller than it was last year, and is nearly $300 billion smaller than when President Obama took office. To add a little historical context to this, over the last four decades, only two presidents have reduced the deficit this much, this quickly: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
This is one of those stories that doesn't get a lot of press — did you hear about it before now? — which makes it easy for Mitt Romney to lie about it and get away with it. But the deficit has historically grown under Republican presidents and shrunk under Democrats.
So when Mitt Romney tells you that "getting our fiscal house in order is more than an economic imperative — it's a moral imperative" and that "Americans deserve a president who will secure a future for our children that doesn't leave them buried in debt," he's telling you to vote for Barack Obama and the Democrats because clearly the Republicans don't know how to do anything about the deficit but make it bigger.
By the way, I'm sure that if the Republicans actually admitted that the deficit had shrunk in the last four years, they'd take credit for it, saying they stopped Obama from his "reckless spending." Yeah, except they haven't passed a budget in two years.
Just catching up on the latest in the efforts on the part of the
conservatives to sow harmony and brotherhood among all Americans of
every race and ethnicity.
Now I will give the Romney campaign the benefit of the doubt on the t-shirt guy; unlike the Bush campaign,
they can't control everyone that shows up at their rallies and police
what they're wearing, no matter how racist they are. And I seriously
doubt that anyone in the Romney campaign is actively selling these
t-shirts. When it comes to alluding to President Obama's race, they're a
little more subtle. But not much.
For example, next up is former South Carolina Gov. (and now Fox News commentator) Mark Sanford, recently
returned from hiking the Appalachian Trail, who tells Fox News what
President Obama plans to do at the next debate with Mitt Romney:
"Obama's going to come out in this case much more forcefully, and he's going to throw a lot of spears,"
Sanford opined. "And I think it's very, very important that in this
case that, you know, Romney stay focused on his vision for the country
and stay focused on the things that, I think, matter most to people in
this country, which is, where is the economy going, where are we with
jobs, and what's happening next on the debt and the deficit issue?"
[emphasis added]
Yes, Mr. Sanford just called the President of the United States a spearchucker. And if you don't think that he did it intentionally and that he knew he
was tweeting his dogwhistle, then you're as stupid and as racially
insensitive as he hopes you are.
And to make it a trifecta, here's Jason Thompson, son of Tommy
Thompson (R-WI), speaking on behalf of his father's candidacy for the
Senate and making travel plans for Mr. Obama:
Jason Thompson, the son of former Governor and Wisconson
[sic] Senate candidate Tommy Thompson, speaking this morning at a brunch
attended by Tommy Thompson and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said that "we have the opportunity to send President Obama back to Chicago — or
Kenya." A woman in attendance then chimed in "we are taking donations
for that Kenya trip." A spokesman for Thompson did not immediately
return a request for comment.
See, that's supposed to be funny, but the Republicans really aren't
that good at comedy because they don't get the essence of
what makes something funny, or they think that just by putting a smile
or a laugh on something cruel makes it humorous and therefore totally
not racist. The art of comedy is knowing when you’re not funny at all. That's a lesson these people have yet to learn.
Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu is an odious has-been who got bounced out of his job as George H.W. Bush's chief of staff for misusing government planes and generally being a prick. (Irony of ironies, it was George W. Bush who told him to take a hike.) Now he's back as a surrogate for Mitt Romney and proving that the passage of time has not taught him anything about humility or second-guessing other people:
Mitt Romney campaign co-chair and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu accused President Obama of waiting too long to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, in an interview with the New York Times that was published on Saturday. Sununu said that Obama was "timid," could have gone after the terrorist mastermind sooner, and attributed the successful operation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
The president is trying to take credit for following the strategy and the tactics put into place by George W. Bush. At some point the president is going to have to explain why he was timid on the first two or three opportunities that we had. Thank goodness Hillary Clinton was there was to convince him to do the right thing. [...] His trying to take credit for having been decisive belies the fact that he wasn't decisive until pressed by others.
But former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, described Obama's decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden "gutsy," saying that “people don't realize" what a tough call it was and not everyone would have made the same call. Vice President Biden and Gates both advised Obama against taking the course he chose on the bin Laden raid, noting that "There wasn't any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial."
By Capt. Fogg One casual observation I suspect of having some merit is that people
who complain a lot about some failing in others are covering up
something similar in themselves. Perhaps those who make such a constant
noise about large numbers of our countrymen being freeloaders while
covering themselves in self-adulation would give weight to the
conjecture. Are they really getting a raw deal? One
certainly does hear more than enough fiction from the Republican
Party's candidates about welfare queens driving Cadillacs and the
stifling of initiative that comes from subsidized school lunches and
perhaps a bit less about subsidies for business interests and of course,
now we have that abominable new straw man, the 47%. It's
an American habit, and not just a Conservative habit, to dismiss, and
often angrily dismiss any discussion of factual support for political
arguments and particularly examples of how our assertions fail to be
born out in other countries, so of course those who support Mr. Romney
for reasons known only to their subconscious minds, that 47% of
Americans do not make enough money at present to pay Federal Income Tax
are happy to frame that in terms of government dependency. Of
course, as with most things you hear from Romney and Ryan, it's not
true at all, finely crafted as the rhetoric might be and as effective in
pushing that American middle class self pity hot button. As Ezra Klein pointed
out in the Washington Post not long ago, the taxpayer supporting a
family on $40,000 a year may not pay Federal Income Tax, but he's paying
tax on every dollar he makes while the fortunate one ( excuse me, the
selfless job creator) making $4,000,000 is likely paying less than 35%
on the whole chalupa. As Klein says, it's phrased that way to make it
seem only fair to give a break to those heavily burdened 'job
creators.' What it's not supposed to do is to remind you that
the $40,000 'freeloader' is paying payroll tax on every dime up to
around $100,000. So when you look at the total family tax bill, it
seems quite a different story. The numbers make liars out of a lot of
people and the burden is being shouldered by the rich and poor only it's
the poor and the struggling middle who can't pay their bills because of
it. Taxes aren't cutting into the caviar budget, they're making it
harder to buy the canned tuna and hamburger helper; harder to pay for
college, harder to pay those ridiculous medical bills and harder to buy
those new cars and appliances and houses that are the real job creators.
Not
47 percent
paying nothing, but everybody paying something, and most Americans
paying between 25 percent and 30 percent of their income. Where are the
freeloaders? Where are all those hordes of freeloaders eating up the
hard earned dollars of the job creating Galts? The taxpayer earning a
hundred grand pays more than the one making over a million and the
poverty stricken have to pay 20% of their miserable $25K all of which
they need to spend to stay alive. Is it difficult to refrain from bad
language and malediction when listening to such damaging lies? You bet.
So they're lying of course and as usual. The
total tax burden is far more equally distributed than the Republicans
want you to believe and one might make a case that the people crying
loudest about freeloaders are getting a better deal then they would like
to admit. Perhaps there's some hidden guilt involved, perhaps not.
There
is no more factual support for calling nearly half of us freeloaders
dependent upon government subsidy than there is for Ryan's 3 hour
marathon times and in reply to that cynical bumper sticker I saw
yesterday sneering "4 more years? Are you out of your mind?"
Why no sir, I'm not and I'd remind you that neither intelligence nor
honesty are more equitably distributed in the world than money.
Why do they bother? Why do they waste energy saying that big bad President Obama is such a great talker that Mitt Romney will be lucky to finish the debate without soiling himself? I know. That's what they all do. I just wish they wouldn't.
Here's the latest from longtime Romney advisor Beth Myers, as reported by CNN, in a memo she sent to the network:
President Obama is "widely regarded as one of the most talented political communicators in modern history."
"This will be the eighth one-on-one presidential debate of his political career. For Mitt Romney, it will be his first."
"Four years ago, Barack Obama faced John McCain on the debate stage. According to Gallup, voters judged him the winner of each debate by double-digit margins, and their polling showed he won one debate by an astounding 33-point margin."
Myers argues that Obama will "use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end: attacking Mitt Romney."
"We fully expect a 90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent," she writes in the memo.
Pushing back against emerging conventional wisdom, Myers concludes that the debates will not, in fact, decide the election: "It will be decided by the American people," she says.
One of the reasons the debates won't decide anything is that, I suspect, this bear is already decided.
My guess is that the debates will be a big yawn. Obama won't give Romney a chance for anything close to a knockout blow and, even if he did, Romney is too plodding to take advantage of it. How's that for a boxing metaphor?
Another guess is that the best Romney can do, and maybe this is the point of managing expectations, is that some voters will come away thinkings Mitt didn't entirely suck. But I'll bet you $10,000 the debates won't change a thing.
In spite of the fact that the big money is mostly on the side of the Republicans, the Romney campaign hasn't been spending much of it:
Despite what appears to be a plump bank account and an in-house production studio that cranks out multiple commercials a day, Mr. Romney's campaign has been tightfisted with its advertising budget, leaving him at a disadvantage in several crucial states as President Obama blankets them with ads.
One major reason appears to be that Mr. Romney's campaign finances have been significantly less robust than recent headlines would suggest. Much of the more than $300 million the campaign reported raising this summer is earmarked for the Republican National Committee, state Republican organizations and Congressional races, limiting the money Mr. Romney's own campaign has to spend.
With polls showing President Obama widening his lead in some of these states and the race a dead heat in others, Mr. Romney's lack of a full-throttle media campaign is risky, especially as he struggles to get his message out over the din of news about his campaign's recent setbacks.
It's not like they’re going broke or anything, but I'm guessing that most of the money the GOP is pulling in is going to state and local races because they know they're going to lose the presidential race and think the money is better spent on winning down-ticket like the Senate and House (although the Senate looks safe for the Democrats).
It must be tough to march in lockstep when you're racing for the exits.
I don't know if this will get a lot of play, but it sure is a strange item. Here we are, 46 days to the election, and Mitt Romney's campaign co-chair Tim Pawlenty has decided now would be a good time to resign that position to take a job as a bank lobbyist.
Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is resigning as a national co-chairman of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign to take a job in Washington as a top lobbyist for a group representing banks and financial companies.
Mr. Palwenty's new role as President and chief executive of the Financial Services Roundtable was announced by the organization Thursday morning. In a statement, the group said that Mr. Pawlenty would step down from his role at Mr. Romney's campaign because the organization is bipartisan.
This really is odd. Is it that things are so tense within Team Romney that Pawlenty couldn't wait to get away? Is it that any thought of being rewarded with a cabinet post in a Romney administration is pretty much a lost cause? Or is it just too hard for poor Tim to hang on thinking that if he had only stuck it out, he couldn't be doing any worse than his party's nominee?
Don't forget, he probably was the only credible candidate who could have appealed to the Tea Party right as well as the party establishment and maybe attract enough swing votes. As dull as he would have been as a candidate, it's possible, with the economy in the shape it's in, dull would have worked.
I'll bet he really is shaking his head at the bone-headed decision he made to quit his bid for the nomination when he did.
I almost feel sorry for him. Then again, as a lobbyist for the banks, he'll be making bucket loads of money.
Why is "Romney the Experienced Manager" running such an inept campaign?
By Comrade Misfit Romney has spent a lot of time touting his experience at managing
businesses and making them work. What he doesn't spend as much time
bragging about is the fact that he has been running for the presidency
for the last seven years.
And when he screws up, why the frak doesn't he just say so and then move
on? His doubling-down on his gloating over the slaying of four
American diplomats in Benghazi was unseemly and may have hurt him
badly.
This campaign is by no means over. But if Mittens loses, I'll bet that
the pundits will mark mid-September as the beginning of his failure.
By Capt. Fogg Life provides some tasty moments, even in lean and hopeless times: delicious little bonbons like the news that the Romney campaign had to borrow $20 million last month and is still $11 million in the hole. Of course, that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for that socialist Obama. Say, maybe he can pay off that debt by cutting costs and quitting now! Nah, he'll have to raise some revenue by going after the very, very, very rich. Irony is sweeter than Tupelo honey. But it's the disconnect, the discontinuity at the interface between reality and the wild and hyperbolic hurricane of principle and theory and doctrine and ad hoc explanations that makes these things so sticky, gooey sweet. I had to laugh today at a newspaper comic strip called Mallard Fillmore that illustrates that discontinuity; bashing Obama and liberals and free thinkers so desperately, it's obvious that Bruce Tinsley the perpetrator, has long since run out past the boundaries of the real into a world of his own where Obama is falling in the polls and Tinsley has some far better alternative to offer, but don't ask.
Humor from the alternate reality where Bush's failures were Clinton's fault, where the Bush economic fundamentals were "robust" and where paying off Bush's unprecedented spending spree means the debt is Obama's fault. A reality where the government cannot create jobs but that Damn Obama isn't creating the jobs we demand. Hey, I'm four years older than I was four years ago. Damn those liberals! No, sorry Tinsley, you never were funny. Bitter, angry, and a bit delusional, and really a bit pathetic certainly. You've been very wrong for a very long time and you need to recognize it. You get printed so that the papers can pretend to be balanced, so that their corporate owners can be told that their viewpoints are being served and so that the barrel scrapings, the scab-picking, booger-eating, shack-dwelling, debt-ridden 98-IQ dregs of humanity might buy an occasional paper and find something they have the vocabulary to read and feel good about themselves that they too can hate that Damn Obama just like you -- find an anger bigger than their own to unite behind. (Cross-posted at Human Voices.)
A blog on politics, philosophy, science, sports, and the arts -- featuring news, commentary, and analysis by Michael J.W. Stickings and the Reaction team.
